STAR WARS STUDY BY SOVIET SCIENTISTS REPORTED IN THE 7 JANUARY 1985 ISSUE OF THE WASHINGTON POST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88R01225R000100090001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 17, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 10, 1985
• Content Type: MEMO

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Central Intelligence Agency
D 7-114 14 W"loo
10 JAN 1985
SUBJECT: STAR WARS Study by Soviet Scientists Reported
in the 7 January 1985 issue of The Washington
Post
1. The attached memorandum provides our views on the Soviet
STAR WARS study discussed on the front page of the 7 January 1985
issue of The Washington Post
2. If you have any further questions, comments, or requests,
please contact me or the Chief of the Directed Energy
Brai ch,
Director
Scientific and Weapons Research
Attachment:
As stated
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Central Intelligence Agency
9 January 1985
STAR WARS STUDY BY SOVIET SCIENTISTS REPORTED IN THE
7 JANUARY 1985 ISSUE OF THE WASHINGTON POST
Summary
The Soviet STAR WARS (Strategic Defense Initiative),
study discussed on page 1 of the 7 January 1985 issue of
The Washington Post was not prepared for the Schultz-
Gromyko talks. We believe that the report was written to
serve as a propaganda tool against SDI. It was initially
drafted in 1983 probably to reinforce the views of US
scientists opposed to SDI. It was written by Soviet
scientists with primarily civilian, not military,
backg.ounds. We believe that Soviet work on SDI-related
technologies is being conducted by other scientists in
other organizations. The report itself is generally
superficial in its analysis and contains at least one
technical error
Discussion
The paper discussed in "Soviets See US 'Deception"' on page 1 of the 7
January 1985 issue of The Washington Post is almost certainly a version of a
previously disseminated Soviet report. That report is dated Moscow 1984, has
the same coauthors as discussed in The Washington Post, and was done under the
auspices of the Committee of Soviet Scientists for Peace, Against Nuclear
Threat. The report has had various titles including "A Space-Based Anti-
This memorandum was prepares
Scientific and Weapons Research.
of the Office of
con ri u ions were made by
____
the Office of Central
Reference. This memorandum has been coordinated with the Office
of Soviet Analysis. Information available as of 7 January 1985
was used. Comments and queries are welcome and may be directed
to the Chief, Directed Energy Branch, OSWR,
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SW M 85-10 0
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Missile System With Directed Energy Weapons: Strategic, Legal and Political
Implications" and "Strategic and International-Political Consequences of
e-Based Anti-Missile System Using Directed Energy Weapons."
F rrAnhina
the report was prepared by "nonprofessionals, people whose
specialization is other than ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems, and that
they used only overtly available information, mainly from the Western press."
(After reviewing the backgrounds of the coauthors, we agree that they probably
are not direcUm involved in BMD or s ace-based directed energy work.) In a.
Although roughly 90 percent of Soviet space efforts probably have
military applications, the six scientific coauthors of this report are from an
organization representing the relatively small civilian/scientific effort.
This organization, the Institute of Space Research, has some functions similar
to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Nevertheless,
some of its work has been in direct support of the military. However, judging
from their backgrounds, the coauthors of the report are almost certainly not
involved in the development of directed-energy systems. The other three
coauthors of the report are from the Institute of the USA and Canada Studies
and the Institute of the World of the Economy and International Relations.
They are basically political scientists.
The report asserts that space-based SDI systems are too technically
complex, expensive, and easily counter-measured to be worthwhile. However,
the report examines only one possible SDI variant in enough depth to show
complexity and cost--namely a hydrogen fluoride chemical laser that could be
implemented in the 1990s. Although mentioned, other possibilities, such as
neutral particle beams, x-ray lasers, and krypton fluoride lasers, are not
analyzed in as much detail. Other SDI concepts, e.g. ground-based terminal
defense and space-based kinetic-energy weapons, are not discussed. Many of
the ideas presented, particularly in the countermeasures area, were taken
directly from the US open literature and do not represent original Soviet
ideas.
The report itself contains a glaring technical error. Namely, the
equation for calculation of the potential kill range of a nuclear-driven x-ray
laser is incorrect. The kill range obtained is too short for the assumptions
used
We believe that the report was written to serve as a propaganda tool
against SDI. The report apparently was written to reinforce the arguments
used by US scientists against SDI. The report has wide distribution in the
West but apparently little distribution inside the Soviet Union. To our
knowledge, the arguments of technical complexity, high cost, and easy
countermeasures have not been brought up in a totally Russian news medium.
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According to a US scientist
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Rather, the Soviet media have argued that a SDI system would lead to a US
first-strike capability, would be in violation of existing treaties, and would
allow attack of ground-targets from space
The results of the report have been previously highlighted by the Soviet
scientist responsible for the generation'of the report, Ye. P. Velikhov, in an
article in the May 1984 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Dr.
Velikhov also discussed some of'the results of the report in the 24 June 1984
issue of The Washington Post. The report itself was also given to the United
Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany in addition to select groups of US
scientists. A 24-page draft of the report was made available to US scientists
in October of 1983
The report demonstrates the large amount of technical data about US
concepts for SDI that can be gleaned from the open literature. These include
missile vulnerabilities to laser and particle-beam irradiation, beam
divergences for laser and particle-beam weapons, and output powers for these
weapons, as well as estimates for the size and mass of a laser system. A
total of 34 references to 15 US technical journals were made. Aviation Week
and Space Technology and Astronautics and Aeronautics were cited more times
than the other journals. Also, most of the references cited (23 out of 34)
were published before 23 March 1983, the date of President Reagan's first
announcement of SDI.
A few Soviet publications also are cited. One, entitled Space Must Be
Peaceful, is authored by V.S. Avduyevskiy, who is probably head of a Soviet
space-based laser weapon project. Another is a Soviet analysis of US press
reports of classified US work on nuclear-explosive-pumped x-ray lasers. Other
Soviet references on excimer, iodine, and free-electron lasers also may
reflect classified Soviet work. None of this work was done by the coauthors
of the report or even by their organizations
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SUBJECT: STAR WARS Study by Soviet Scientists Reported in
the 7 January 1985 Washington Post
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